Russ Epp-Leppel 💜💀

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write to a famous author & ask for advice.

KURT VONNEGUT - born 103yrs ago today - was the only one to respond.

His reply was a doozy.

How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don't kno...

how did i go so long not knowing we were literally teaching people to read wrong. i knew something wasn't right but jesus christ www.apmreports.org/episode/2019...

"Goodman rejected the idea that reading is a precise process that involves exact or detailed perception of letters or words."
That's exactly the fucking definition! 🤬

Bashir and Garak make eyes at each other in the latter's first ever scene in Deep Space Nine. The homoerotic tension between the two characters eventually became so great that executives told them to tone it down. Alexander Siddig and Andrew Robinson said no and turned it up to eleven instead. (S1E03 "Past Prologue")

Jadzia Dax and Lenara Kahn on the verge of rekindling the relationship from their symbionts' past lives (S4E06 "Rejoined")

Chief O'Brien and Dr. Bashir getting ruinously drunk together, leading to O'Brien telling Bashir "You're not an 'in-between' kinda guy. People either love you or hate you. I mean, I *hated* you when we first met, but now... well, now I don't." (S3E22 "Explorers")

Chief O'Brien (left) and his wife Keiko (right) making horny eyes at Major Kira Nerys, who is pregnant with the O'Briens' child for technobabbly reasons. I swear Keiko was pushing for a triad. (S4E17 "Accession")

Tonight's aesthetic is DS9 being the gayest thing on television in the past 30+ years.
That whole station was one big, Queer polycule and we wouldn't have it any other way.

EPA Proposes Changes to Make PFAS Reporting Requirements More Practical and Implementable, Reducing Regulatory Burden | US EPA EPA released a proposal to improve the scope of its PFAS reporting regulations under TSCA to make them more practical and implementable and reduce unnecessary, or potentially duplicative, reporting re...

Because these chemicals can linger in water, soil, and even the human body. The public will have less data about potential exposure. The EPA will take public comments for 45 days before deciding whether to finalize the new exemptions.

The EPA has proposed easing some reporting rules for “forever chemicals,” known as PFAS man-made compounds found in many products that don’t break down in the environment. The plan would exempt certain cases, like very small amounts of PFAS (under 0.1%), chemicals made only as byproducts, and

Rewatching this film the other day, I noticed that not only does Jules misquote Ezekiel 25:17 (which is fairly well-known trivia), he misquotes it inconsistently.
When threating Brett, he says "you will know my name is the Lord," but when he's talking to Ringo, he says "you will know I am the Lord."

Tired: Jules Winnfield has never read the Bible and is just making stuff up.

Wired: The Bible is different in the Tarantino-verse.

Inspired: Jules has seen Sonny Chiba's The Bodyguard.

Two farmers looking at a tower. The one of the left Is pulling up on their bootstrap to no effect. The farmer on the right is using a pully system and people pulling on the rope to pull him up the tower.

Idiom Origin

“pull yourself up by your bootstraps”

This was originally *sarcasm* & meant to convey that the act was impossible.

A boot strap is a loop used to help put your boot on.

This 1921 cartoon from the “Nonpartisan Leader” showcases that you can’t pull upward on your boots to levitate.

can the government do something for anyone who is not a billionaire please

Wonderful news! Thank you, Judge Dianna Gibson, for honoring the will of the voters. She struck down the congressional map drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature,

photo of the First President of Tanzania - Julius Nyerere - with the quote, "The United States is also a one-party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them."

no quote about the US political system has ever gone harder than this one

Surprised Pikachu GIF ALT: Surprised Pikachu GIF

Senate Dems soon:

I'm afraid self-interested politicians won't listen to us until they're the ones who are afraid.

It's giving Walter Simonson's "Cthulhu."

If “cruelty is the point” is a totally viable means of governance then it’s also means “kindness above all else” is also viable.

Judith Beheading Holofernes (c. 1598–1599) by Caravaggio The strong use of light and shadow and vivid reds create a powerful visual presence, but Judith holds the sword in a weak position and wears a somewhat uncertain expression. Her maidservant stands idly by, watching, and a thick band of shadow down the center divides the painting into two halves, visually separating the subject from her own action, as though symbolically robbing her of agency.

Judith Beheading Holofernes (c. 1620) by Artemisia Gentileschi The use of light, shadow, and colour is all here and in fine form, but the action is on another level. Judith and her maidservant are now physically wrestling Holofernes, pinning him down to the bed as Judith plunges her sword through his neck with the full force of her body behind it. She now wears a look of grim determination. There is no separation between subject and action; it is all one, singular if chaotic scene of flesh and blood in a violent clash.

Judith Beheading Holofernes:
Caravaggio's is good. Artemisia Gentileschi's is Something Else.

#MythologyMonday

The Supreme Court won’t hear the same-sex marriage case!!! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

There are still multiple votes left, CALL.

CALL if one of the turncoats is your senator.
CALL if your senator voted no and lay the pressure on anyway.

People's lives literally depend on keeping their ACA tax credits. Read them the riot act.

Time to swear in Adelita Grijalva, let her cast the final vote to release the Epstein files!

They’re wearing masks so they can’t be prosecuted later. As long as they think they can’t be prosecuted, their crimes will intensify. They will torture, starve and kill, as they have already, on greater and greater scale.

Signed, someone who’s covered the unaccountable War on Terror for 23 years.

A federal judge issued a stark warning about what he called an “existential threat to democracy” in a forceful first-person essay published Sunday. He revealed that he resigned from the bench to freely speak out against Trump,

Screen grab of a tweet from Mike Godwin (creator of Godwin's Law) saying "By all means, compare these shitheads to Nazis. Again and again. I'm with you." Label saying "Reminder that Godwin's Law has officially been suspended regarding MAGA".

This is exactly what I see every time I watch the mainstream mediathese days. Platforming fascists and conspiracy theorists in the deluded belief that it gives balance to an argument. Also, they ARE Nazis. Even the guy who came up with Godwin's Law says so:

👇🎯 Unfortunately, this is true & probably the only way. Voters need to realize that hating government, & illegally defunding & dismantling it, & pretending that we can run a modern society/economy on Ronald Reagan's shabby talking point & worn copies of Atlas Shrugged & Mein Kampf is untenable.

Democrats would do well to remember that trusting a party defined by deceit and bad faith isn’t just naïve, it’s dangerous to democracy itself.

In case you’re wondering how bad things are, we are getting calls from food pantries on military bases asking if we have any food we can share because they’re hungry.

190. SNAP WTF? A very quick explainer on what (and why) Justice Jackson issued an "administrative stay" in the SNAP case late on Friday night, and on what's likely to happen next

We wanted to share this to help people understand what’s going on. It was shared by Jay Kuo and written by Steve Vladeck a clear, straightforward breakdown of the SNAP situation.

Trump got his wish to starve Americans. The Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to temporarily withhold portions of SNAP payments for November. Huge thanks to the states and workers who rushed to process benefits before the ruling came down, not all heroes wear capes!